Hrudolfensis’ Random Thought: Superman’s Laser Eyes

First I want to apologise about last week. I’m preparing to move so it’s been a bit mad around here and the internet went down and then on thursday I had to go and look at a place, but luckily things seem to be calming down and I haven’t got anymore stuff to do until September.

Ok so a few weeks ago I went to see the new Superman movie. It was ok, nothing special but it was pretty good. But the weird thing is Superman’s laser eyes.

All the other powers he has are given decent explanations or can be explained vaguely with a bastardised form of science. For instance we’re told the reason he can fly is that earth’s gravity is weaker than that of krypton. That would mean that basically what he is doing is controlled falling and making alterations in tragectory by pushing against the atmosphere (like a glider) like I said this is a bastardised form of science, the real laws of physics don’t allow it but it’s close enough.

So there’s flight pinned down. What about his strengh. Well two reasons are given for this and a third can be taken. The first is that (according to his father) when Superman was flying through space (when he was just a Superbaby) he got mildly irradiated. And we all know the first rule of comic books “That which in real life gives you cancer, will just make you stronger.”. So Supermans irradiated cells went someway to giving him super strength. The second explanation is that, because earth has a thicker and more nutrient rich atmosphere than krypton, Superman got more nutrition in his diet and so became stronger. Yeah this one kinda makes sense but it’s still kinda iffy. The third explanation for this is something that anyone who watched the BBC dramatisation of HG Well’s “First Men in the Moon”. Because his race come from a planet with higher gravity they have stronger bodies in general because they needed to withstand the gravity of their own planet. In “First Men in the Moon” the humans are stronger than the moon creatures because they’ve evolved in 1/8th the gravity that we have.

Ok this is where things are going to speed up because it’s easier from now on…

Psychic abilities (e.g. Mind Reading) well kryptonians have been around longer than us, their brains are probably more advanced and so they’ve developed psychic abilities.

Seeing through walls. Once again they’re more evolved so they probably have more sensors in their eyes and can pick up on radiation. Or maybe this is just magic space radiation.

So there’s all the (I don’t want to use the word reasonable) reasonable powers. But then we come to laser eyes. No explanation for this is given, even radiation wouldn’t seem to work. I mean look at Cyclops, his eye beams didn’t come from radiation. It was because it was a mutation caused by marxist evolution (the idea that evolution moves in leaps rather than a gentle slope) and the falling out of a plane thing helped it come out of it’s shell a bit too much. So radiation is out. I suppose it could be because of evolution but then, why do none of the other kryptonians seem to have that power. It has to be something to do with his travel to or development on earth. At no point is it given an explanation like the others. And that really annoys me.